


Losing Faith

by quixoticpenguin



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: F/M, Flaurel - Freeform, flaural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 20:25:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4975315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixoticpenguin/pseuds/quixoticpenguin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank needs Laurel to be innocent. He needs to believe that something—that Laurel—is better than he is. 2x01</p>
            </blockquote>





	Losing Faith

"It's Laurel."

Annalise didn't react. She didn't even twitch. Frank eyed her, but her back wasn't giving anything away. Woman knew he could read her face, even when she did her best statue impression. He knew her too well. It was his job to figure people out, to ferret out hidden truths.

"It's Laurel," he repeated to a silent Annalise.

And Frank had worried about Annalise handling The Puppy alone. He had been concerned. Could she be objective? Or would The Puppy's big brown eyes get him under her skin like they had  that first day of class? Frank had never fully trusted Wes's naïveté. No one—especially not some squeaky clean kid without a past—played Annalise Keating like that without some seriously fucked up skills.

_"Rebecca's dead."_

He'd worried about Annalise. Frank would have laughed if he wasn't afraid of the bile in his stomach roiling like a fucking volcano. The puppy may have her wrapped around his finger, but Annalise could still cling to objectivity when she had to. She had found the truth. Done her job. Done _his_ job.

He'd gotten too sure. He'd bought that idealized crap about helping people, thought that maybe someone could escape this hell without being burned. Someone could be better.

Well, fuck that.

"She's always sticking her head where it doesn't belong. Asking questions that don't concern her." Frank roamed around the kitchen, gesturing with his glass to each point as he listed them one by one. Flashes of Laurel flitted through his mind. His detached professionalism took a crippling blow from each unwelcome memory.

"She lied to me about the trophy that night—"

_Laurel, wrecked and crying on his couch, needing him to take care of her, needing him to protect her, needing him._

"—stole Prom Queen's ring—"

_Laurel, fighting back against Prom Queen's onslaught of anger, standing up for herself, no longer pretending to be the mousey girl he'd underestimated at first._

"—she even suggested I kill Rebecca that day," Frank finished angrily.

_Laurel's big ole blue eyes, beseeching him to make the problem go away._

Frank waited for Annalise to respond, his chest heaving and breath heavy. Her gaze stayed fixed on the floor, and Frank took it as permission to continue. Not that he could stop himself.

"It's just like you say; it's always the ones you least expect—the quiet ones."

_"Rebecca's dead. Isn't she."_

It hadn't been a question. God, she didn't even pretend not to know the girl was dead. Frank took a sip, relishing the burning whiskey as it fueled his explosive rant.

"Makes sense with her background, too—her father . . . you don't grow up to be normal when that's who raises you. Nah. You become messed up." He hid his face in his glass.

The ice rattled against his glass in time with his shaking head. She had fooled him. It was like he stared into a warped fun house mirror and saw a wide-eyed Brown girl being molded into an all too familiar shape. Had she always been like that? Or was it him? Maybe he'd managed what a lifetime in a family like that couldn't.

He'd twisted her around, let her moral compass get haywired, thought she needed a little corrupting. If he could go back to the fight with Laurel, the night he—they—had kissed, the night he'd finally given in to the girl that wasn't quite like any of the others, he would knock himself out before he could drag her down to his level.

Frank's tirade shuddered to a halt. Fury beat against his chest until he thought his lungs would explode. Annalise, Bonnie, even Laurel . . . they didn't understand. Frank didn't need some wayward sociopath to validate his past. He needed that girl who voiced ethical qualms, who rolled her eyes at Doucheface's crass attempts at humor, who watched the other three carefully, who took care of things quietly, who . . .

_The cold bit through Frank's jacket as he hovered just outside of arm's length, pleading with a God that had damned him, that he would help more than hurt._

. . . who made him feel, if just for the moments they stole together, that he was a better man.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> No smut, I know. A) I can't write it well, and B) there's plenty of it in the Flaurel ship. We all know these two idiots feel things for each other, even when it's just panicked anger.


End file.
